Read Online Bellwether by Connie Willis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Connie Willis
Tags: antique
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po-mo pink, couldn’t make them wear it and make jokes about it and write editorials on the subject of “What is fashion coming to?”
The fashion designers could make it popular this season, especially since nobody would be able to find anything else in the stores, but they couldn’t make it a fad. In 1971, they’d tried to introduce the long midiskirt and failed utterly, and they’d been predicting the “comeback of the hat” for years to no avail. It took more than merchandising to make a fad, and I didn’t have any idea what that something more was.
And the more I fed in my data, the more convinced I was the answer wasn’t in it, that increased independence and lice and bicycling were nothing more than excuses, reasons thought up afterward to explain what no one understood. Especially me.
I wondered if I was even in the right field. I was feeling so dissatisfied, as if everything I was doing was pointless, so … itch.
Flip, I thought. She did this to me with her talk about Brine and Groupthink. She’s some kind of anti-guardian angel, following me everywhere, hindering rather than helping and putting me in a bad mood. And I’m not going to let her ruin my weekend. It’s bad enough she ruins the rest of the week.
I bought a piece of chocolate cheesecake and went back to the library and checked out The Red Badge of Courage, How Green Was My Valley , and The Color Purple , but the mood persisted throughout the steely afternoon, and all the icy way home, making it impossible for me to work.
I tried reading the chaos theory book I’d checked out, but it just made me more depressed. Chaotic systems had so many variables it would have been nearly impossible to predict the systems’ behavior if they acted in logical, straightforward ways. But they didn’t.
Every variable interacted with every other, colliding and connecting in unexpected ways, setting up iteration loops that fed into the system again and again, crisscrossing and connecting the variables so many ways it wasn’t surprising a butterfly could have a devastating effect. Or none at all.
I could see why Dr. O’Reilly had wanted to study a system with limited variables, but what was limited? According to the book, anything and everything was a variable: entropy, gravity, the quantum effects of an electron, or a star on the other side of the universe.
So even if Dr. O’Reilly was right and there weren’t any outside X factors operating on the system, there was no way to compute all the variables or even decide what they were.
It all bore an uncomfortable resemblance to fads and made me wonder which variables I wasn’t taking into account, so that when Billy Ray called, I clutched at him like a drowning man. “I’m so glad you called,” I said. “My research went faster than I thought it would, so I’m free after all. Where are you?”
“On my way to Bozeman,” he said. “When you said you were busy, I decided to skip the seminar and go pick up those Targhees I was looking at.” He paused, and I could hear the warning hum of his cell phone. “I’ll be back on Monday. How about dinner sometime next week?”
I wanted dinner tonight, I thought crabbily. “Great,” I said. “Call me when you get back.”
The hum crescendoed. “Sorry we missed each oth—” he said and went out of range.
I went and looked out the window at the sleet and then got into bed and read Led On by Fate cover to cover, which wasn’t much of a feat. It was only ninety-four pages long, and so obviously wretchedly written it was destined to become a huge fad.
Its premise was that everything was ordained and organized by guardian angels, and the heroine was given to saying things like “Everything happens for a reason , Derek! You broke off our engagement and slept with Edwina and were implicated in her death, and I turned to Paolo for comfort and went to Nepal with him so that we’d learn the meaning of suffering and despair, without which true love is
The fashion designers could make it popular this season, especially since nobody would be able to find anything else in the stores, but they couldn’t make it a fad. In 1971, they’d tried to introduce the long midiskirt and failed utterly, and they’d been predicting the “comeback of the hat” for years to no avail. It took more than merchandising to make a fad, and I didn’t have any idea what that something more was.
And the more I fed in my data, the more convinced I was the answer wasn’t in it, that increased independence and lice and bicycling were nothing more than excuses, reasons thought up afterward to explain what no one understood. Especially me.
I wondered if I was even in the right field. I was feeling so dissatisfied, as if everything I was doing was pointless, so … itch.
Flip, I thought. She did this to me with her talk about Brine and Groupthink. She’s some kind of anti-guardian angel, following me everywhere, hindering rather than helping and putting me in a bad mood. And I’m not going to let her ruin my weekend. It’s bad enough she ruins the rest of the week.
I bought a piece of chocolate cheesecake and went back to the library and checked out The Red Badge of Courage, How Green Was My Valley , and The Color Purple , but the mood persisted throughout the steely afternoon, and all the icy way home, making it impossible for me to work.
I tried reading the chaos theory book I’d checked out, but it just made me more depressed. Chaotic systems had so many variables it would have been nearly impossible to predict the systems’ behavior if they acted in logical, straightforward ways. But they didn’t.
Every variable interacted with every other, colliding and connecting in unexpected ways, setting up iteration loops that fed into the system again and again, crisscrossing and connecting the variables so many ways it wasn’t surprising a butterfly could have a devastating effect. Or none at all.
I could see why Dr. O’Reilly had wanted to study a system with limited variables, but what was limited? According to the book, anything and everything was a variable: entropy, gravity, the quantum effects of an electron, or a star on the other side of the universe.
So even if Dr. O’Reilly was right and there weren’t any outside X factors operating on the system, there was no way to compute all the variables or even decide what they were.
It all bore an uncomfortable resemblance to fads and made me wonder which variables I wasn’t taking into account, so that when Billy Ray called, I clutched at him like a drowning man. “I’m so glad you called,” I said. “My research went faster than I thought it would, so I’m free after all. Where are you?”
“On my way to Bozeman,” he said. “When you said you were busy, I decided to skip the seminar and go pick up those Targhees I was looking at.” He paused, and I could hear the warning hum of his cell phone. “I’ll be back on Monday. How about dinner sometime next week?”
I wanted dinner tonight, I thought crabbily. “Great,” I said. “Call me when you get back.”
The hum crescendoed. “Sorry we missed each oth—” he said and went out of range.
I went and looked out the window at the sleet and then got into bed and read Led On by Fate cover to cover, which wasn’t much of a feat. It was only ninety-four pages long, and so obviously wretchedly written it was destined to become a huge fad.
Its premise was that everything was ordained and organized by guardian angels, and the heroine was given to saying things like “Everything happens for a reason , Derek! You broke off our engagement and slept with Edwina and were implicated in her death, and I turned to Paolo for comfort and went to Nepal with him so that we’d learn the meaning of suffering and despair, without which true love is
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